I have given you a little background on my journey from as I grew up in our family pharmacy. Today I want to share with you an experience that has changed my life, an experience that I hope no one has to go through.
I was working in one of my family’s pharmacies during the first week of June 2006. Summer was upon us and the weather was sunny, warm, and beautiful. My workload has been stressful or overwhelming from time to time, but it is funny how daily activities become part of the status quo and we can ignore the consequences of our actions. I had started to experience a funny tingling in my right hand. It was a feeling like you experience when you have your arm or leg fall asleep and it tingles just to the point of being uncomfortable like little pins and needles are poking you, yet I still had full control of movement. I had not experienced this before and I assumed that it was from too much typing or maybe over exertion from yard work over the weekend. This feeling lasted for around 10 minutes so I took a couple of naproxen and figured that it would go away on its own. It did. A couple of days went by and I would get recurrent episodes. Interestingly enough they were not frequent enough or painful in the sense that it made me think about seeking medical help. But things got worse.
In the early morning hours of June 6th I was unable to sleep because my hand was so uncomfortable. I got up and paced around my computer room wondering what action to take. It was uncomfortable but not painful. I took two more naproxen, had a snack and was finally able to go to sleep after about 30 minutes. My wife slept through all this and I did not tell her about it. Men are so stubborn! As I think about it now, the experience didn’t cause me to think, “should I go to the hospital?” I just took more naproxen and things got better.
I had another episode before we opened the pharmacy that morning. My right hand and lower arm were so uncomfortable that I went to sit down to collect myself. Again, two more naproxen and it relapsed after a short period of time.
That day started off as a normal day at the pharmacy. In retrospect as I type this up I look back and think HELLO! Mr. Pharmacist what were you thinking?
To be continued…
Has anyone else had an experience that they knew they should react in a different way than they did at the time it happened?
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